Monthly Archives: May 2013

In April, the Glasgow Branch enjoyed a wonderful Pastoral visit with Alyson Lewin. Alyson, a native of Belfast, is well known for arrangements of many folk tunes. As well as being teacher, she also runs Hawthorns Publishing specializing in music for the recorder that we all know and love.

It was at last a truly spring day and we were very happy to be joined by guests from Edinburgh, Perth and Dollar.

Despite the bad start to the day when the heating system developed a problem, (later resolved) we warmed to the music and Alyson’s conducting shedding the odd layer of clothing as the day progressed.

We started with Josquin’s ‘El Grillo’, followed by a charming piece that we had not played before, Benjamin Cooke’s ‘Epitaph on a Dormouse’. This was followed by two beautiful arrangements of Byrd’s ‘Ave verum corpus’ and Handel’s ‘Vinto e l’amor’.

We then broke for a buffet lunch and a great deal of chatter, catching up with long standing friends and meeting new ones.

The second half of the programme started with a big six-part piece, Schein’s ‘Canzona in Six Parts’ for SSATTB . Lynne Hope joined us in this on the gamba. This made the sound even richer and once we had sight read the music the next play through enabled us to appreciate the wonderful interwoven themes. We finished with Steve Marshall’s ‘Northumberland Suite’ (SATTBGbCb), and played all four movements – ‘Lavender’s Blue’, Bonny at Morn’, ‘Dance to Your Daddy’ and ‘Bobby Shaftoe’. As most of us knew the tunes we thought we had it easy but beware! Steve pops in some interesting changes and variations that can catch one out. It was a good finale to a very happy day. The Glasgow branch would like to thank Alyson and all our guests for making it so successful.